Online Life Coaching Course
- Learn to be a Personal Trainer or Life Coach
- Learn coaching skills start your own business, or seek employment
- Pursue a passion, and improve your employability in the helping professions
This course will enable people in health, fitness, counselling, social work etc to help others set and achieve life goals. Develop an appreciation of how different perceptions of the world can be just as critical as knowledge, skill and opportunity in a person's success or failure. The course also covers such things as coaching processes, coaching skills and goal setting; and is equally relevant to developing both physical and psychological well being in the client
.ACS student comment: "I am enjoying it, as with a great deal of adult learning I am confirming things that I know, learning new ones and disputing things that I THOUGHT I knew!!!! Well worth the doing. Mind you I have the course with me all the time as by opting for the CD version I have it loaded onto my HTC phone and can read and write at any 'spare point'. IDEAL for me!" Jane Hurst, UK, Life Coaching course.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The course is divided into ten lessons as follows:
- Introduction: Nature and scope of life coaching
- Individual perceptions
- A well-balanced life
- Coaching processes
- Coaching skills
- Coaching & physical well-being
- Coaching & psychological well-being
- Coaching success
- Goal-setting
- Review and adjustment
Duration: 100 hours
AIMS
- Define life coaching and differentiate it from other professions such as psychotherapist, counsellor, personal trainer and so on.
- Understand that people perceive the world in different ways, and identify ways to help clients change counter-productive perceptions without excessive discomfort.
- Define a well-rounded individual and well-rounded life.
- Define different coaching skills including listening, analysing, planning and focusing.
- Identify ways in which life coaching can contribute to physical well-being.
- Identify ways in which life coaching can contribute to psychological well-being.
- Identify the areas in which successful life coaching can benefit a client.
- Understand the importance enabling clients to develop aims, plans and goals.
- Recognise the importance of reviewing and adjusting the life-coaching processes.
Examples: WHAT YOU MAY DO IN THIS COURSE
Interview a life-coach (or someone who offers life-coaching service as part of their professional counselling repertoire) for information on the nature of life-coaching.
Identify principles that differentiate life coaching from other helping professions.
Consider pros and cons of different approaches to life coaching.
Conduct case studies to reflect on and/or observe the effects of different life-coaching approaches on improving a person’s quality of life.
Design and administer a questionnaire to research some effects of negative aspects of self-perception.
Discuss the importance of balancing a client’s limitations and encouraging to step outside their comfort zones
Identify means of monitoring an individual’s self-perceptions.
Examine the relationship and interaction between mental/psychological and physical health and wellbeing.
Consider how to deal with clients with special needs such as disabilities.
Identify the processes involved in life coaching and describe what each can contribute to a client's personal growth and development.
Discuss ways individuals might resist life changes and ways to facilitate change.
Discuss the pros and cons of assertiveness training.
Identify reasons that individuals are unable to make decisions.
Identify different life coaching skills and when they are required.
Explain the importance of listening to the client and how to do it.
Consider factors that might make a life coach’s personal skill repertoire ineffectual.
Discuss the role and risks of physical life coaching in the life-coaching process.
Research factors that must be considered when setting out a life coaching plan to promote physical health, and psychological health.
Identify crucial information to be included in the development of a client’s plan.
Discuss ways to nurture a client's goal setting, planning and self-monitoring skills .
Research how much life-coaches use/do not use individualised client plans.
How can the life-coach monitor the effectiveness of his/her program for a client?
Create and evaluate an action plan for a real person/client, including monitoring.
WORKING AS A LIFE COACH
Life coaching is a relatively new profession - although coaches have been around for a long time in the guise of trainers, instructors, managers and tutors for various professions and disciplines. Life coaching is not easily defined, but it is a type of mentoring which focuses on helping individuals to achieve what they would like to achieve and thereby to lead more fulfilling lives. Unlike other forms of coaching, it takes place outside of the workplace and is concerned with all aspects of a person's life.
Life coaches help individuals in many different areas of their life, such as:
- Debt advice
- Weight loss
- Careers counselling
- Health
- Relationships
- Self-esteem
- Practical life skills e.g. time management
- Physical well being
- Physical image
- Public and professional image
- Setting goals
- And so on...
Opportunities
Well, there is no real set answer to that. Life coaches may work for themselves or for someone else.
Working for an Organisation
Occasionally life coaches may work for another organisation. They may offer coaching support to staff or clients as part of the organisation. For example, a consortium of counsellors may also have life coaches who can offer additional support to their clients.
Coaching Consultancy
There are now consultancies in many major cities who may employ one or several life coaches. These operate in much the same way as a counselling practice or psychology clinic whereby a new client is paired with a coach whose skills or training closely match the areas the client has articulated as being areas they would like to improve or change.
Other Coaching Institutions
Some life coaches can work within coaching institutions. For example, in the field of sport, athletes may have coaches who help them improve their sporting performance, but a life coach may be employed to look at other aspects of that person's life and help them in those areas. For example, a top athlete may suddenly start to lose races. Their training coach can help them to try and maintain their sporting performance, but it could be due to other issues – they are no longer interested, they have a financial crisis, they have a personal crisis at home and so on – a life coach may be better able to help them with these things.
Self-employment
Generally speaking, most life coaches are self-employed. They may work from their own home or office supporting clients. Obviously, when working as a self-employed person, the life coach also has to take account of their own accounts, administration, and marketing, whilst also being responsible for finding new clients. Some life coaches may work full time with clients, but others may choose to only work part-time (perhaps because they are semi-retired). Some may work as a life coach whilst still working in another job. It will really depend on the life coach and what they hope to achieve from their work.
In whichever way you choose to become a life coach, it can be a very fulfilling career.
Risks and Challenges
Some of the disadvantages include:
- Can involve unsociable hours.
- Some clients may be overly demanding.
- May take time before positive changes can be observed in clients.
- Can be disheartening if unable to work with a client.
- Some clients may become dependent.
- There may be times when you are not financially secure if you are not able to achieve a sufficient level of clients.
As a coach, you have to have the resilience and perseverance to be able to withstand the hard times and to make the most of the good times. After all, you are a mentor and, for some, a role model, and you will not be regarded highly if you are observed to be dealing with your own problems inappropriately.
How to become a Life Coach
How to become a life coach varies from country to country. It is possible to take courses to qualify as a life coach. Many of these are offered by coaching institutes but there are some available through government-run colleges. Some private institutions also offer coaching courses via distance education which can vary considerably in subject matter and number of hours taken to complete them.
Other people may find that they are able to use their experiences from previous jobs, such as coaching, counselling and so on, and use that to develop themselves more as a life coach. Some countries have certain requirements as to the qualifications and experience required by a life coach, whilst other countries have not yet formally stated the qualifications or experience required. To date, however, the industry remains unregulated in most countries.
If you are planning on working as a life coach, it is advisable to check in the country you intend to work in as to the requirements for that country. You should consider things such as:
- Qualifications needed
- Experience required
- Registrations with organisations required
In order to provide the best possible service to a client, it is important to undertake a course in life coaching. People seeking a life coach will at least want to know that they have undertaken some kind of training.
As with the clients of life coaches, life coaches themselves come from a broad range of backgrounds. What they have in common is not only a desire to help others achieve fulfilling lives, but also a striving towards enhancing their own personal development.
Often, life coaches may have come from other areas of work. For example, they may be a fitness trainer and also want to offer life coaching as part of their repertoire. They may be a counsellor who wishes to move into life coaching, or a nutritionist who wants to do life coaching on the side. At other times, they may be someone with a lot of life experience who believes they have something to offer others.
Some life coaches prefer to coach within their area of expertise. For example, the fitness trainer may prefer to coach people with fitness-related issues. Others will seek to broaden their knowledge of other areas so they can add them to their coaching repertoire.
Some of the important skills a coach needs to have or develop are:
- Good listening skills
- Good communication skills
- Patience
- Perseverance
- Empathy
- Punctuality
- Leadership
- A good sense of humour
- Other related jobs
- Counsellor
- Horticultural Therapist
- Business Coach
- Sports Coach
- Nutritional Counsellor
- Welfare Worker
- Careers Counsellor
- Weight Loss Consultant
- Guidance Counsellor
- Chaplain
Dealing with emotions
Human beings are essentially emotional beings, and strong emotions can and will interfere with our ability to deal with issues if they are not confronted. It is not enough to tell someone to take control of their emotions, and there is certainly little benefit in suppressing them. Instead, the client should be encouraged to become aware of their emotions by naming them and distinguishing between them. For instance, a client who feels ‘terrible’ may need assistance in identifying just what she is feeling. Not being able to clearly identify an emotion increases the person’s feeling that her emotions are beyond her control. A key element of the cognitive-behavioural approach, in fact, is helping clients name their emotions and thereby gain some control over them.
Because a client may be suffering from symptoms caused by suppressed emotions, the life coach may need to allow and even encourage emotional expression. Crying, punching a pillow, screaming or saying whatever is in one’s mind to express pent up emotion can clear away emotional blocks and is called catharsis. It must be handled sensitively, without judgement, and not by encouraging self pity – a difficult task that may be better handled by a counsellor. The life coach’s task here is to permit the client to express what they have been afraid to express in a safe, non-judgmental environment, then to move the client from emotional expression towards thinking about what just happened, and what can be learned from it that will help the client overcome barriers and plan for change.
ACS is also an organisational member of the Association for Coaching. Students on the Life Coaching course can apply for student membership
